Note still a looong ways from capturing the typical mainstream person who has no (even 2nd degree) relationship to crypto.
I'd speculate that 2nd degree connections are a good portion of the population as a whole...
I might agree except first we have to hurdle the problem that Steemit wasn't sticky with Asians (who live in Asia) and I believe ditto with Latin Americans, Africans in those regions. There is that one Chinese lady @sweetsssj who blogs daily.
Also Steemit wasn't sticky with the youth nor the middle-aged. The youth don't have the attention span for blogging (and that would to some extent include Asians, Latin Americans, and Africans since they are more childish and less sophisticated as evident by the TV programming). The middle-aged (e.g. myself) can't waste time on something not lucrative or important, unless it is for entertainment or philosophical.
Huge swaths of demographics that Steemit is a looong ways from.
Steemit is
an ideological Millennials furball and not at all appealing to other cultures and demographics. Significantly appears to maybe be because the whales are Millennials (and the entire project is driven significantly by ideological memes), which is another reason I chose not to speak with @ned and which I think the project can never become globally mainstream (never put the Millennials in charge of anything!). That doesn't mean that @ned isn't somewhat smart and couldn't do good work, but put enough Millennials together and the groupthink is suffocating. Often @dantheman justifies his designs and actions with Millennials ideological furballs.
..., and certainly a huge portion of the population with any money to spend.
Well the Asians are going to have the most money to spend in aggregate, especially after 2020 as the West collapses. The hightech nerds in the West will still have money to spend, but the 2nd degree relations maybe not. Btw, if you need some convincing on this, check this out and realize that no one in the West will be earning more than about $2 - $3 per hour for any job that can be outsourced online (as the Western Sovereign Debt/Socialism collapse ensues in earnest 2017 - 2032):
http://www.virtualcoworker.com.ph/job-openingsWhen
Duterte was in China this week to declare Philippines was saying goodbye to its subservient alliance with the USA, he announced telcom deals to upgrade Internet broadband in the Philippines. There are huge 10 story call/BPO centers being built all over Davao for example (and every city in the Philippines).
Asia doesn't have the entitlements, so taxes thus wages can remain low (and China's debt can written down unlike the West's debt which will increase forever until the socialists die) until full employment is attained for billions of Asians (then wages can rise faster for all skill levels). For example look at Singapore's medical system financing:
https://www.moh.gov.sg/content/moh_web/home/costs_and_financing/schemes_subsidies/financing_approach.htmlMost people could count a few dozen to hundreds of "friends" and acquaintances to whom they could introduce a social platform if they wanted to (especially if doing so on existing social accounts). Square that and it is between 1000x and 50000x the number of directly involved crypto-heads. You don't really need to reach much beyond second degree, if the product is compelling enough to grab and hold interest once people are introduced to it (currently, Steem is not).
Oh yes, but I was speaking about Steem(it). Of course I believe this. Why do you think I still want to create a social media blockchain project. I know the potential is there and $300 million market cap is only chicken feed compared to what I think is plausible.
And you know this too. And that is why when you see the project that can realistically hit that potential (when you understand it and realize it, which may or may not correspond with launch or pre-launch), you are going to be mining or buying with both fists.
Even if these numbers are wrong (first degrees will have a lot of second degrees in common, for example; I don't know the numbers), reaching the second degree is a sort of proof-of-virality in a way that reaching the first degree is not.
I think you'd agree we need to see both 2nd-degree onboarding and stickiness. Seems Steem may have gotten some 2nd-degree from the hardest core proponents, but they weren't broadly sticky. I remember one guy said his son visited but didn't stick around. And @stellabelle brought her friends who brought friends, who I think were somewhat sticky due to some extreme ideological motivation, but that seemed to me be more representative of the observed meme that Steemit is
an ideological Millennials furball and not at all appealing to other cultures and demographics.
The ideology of Western Millennials make us Gen X want to puke. And doesn't seem to be entirely culturally compatible to Asia, although there is a little bit of the idealism overlap, the hardworking Asians are much more pragmatic. Note however, that @sweetsssj... explained in her blogs that the Chinese youth are spoiled (one-child policy) and idealistic (Communism), so there is greater overlap than with for the example the Thais, Indonesians, Filipinos, Indians, Bangladesh, Cambodians who are not spoiled and focused on lifting themselves out of poverty.
I'd also speculate that Steem has not done very well in reaching the second degree, outside of some particular niche cases like professional bloggers recruiting each other to come and collect thousands of dollars per blog post when that was the case.
I observed similar as stated above.
You don't need to lockup your investment for 1 year weighted average cashout in order to speculate.
You don't have this massive inflation.
This is double counting. If you do lock up your investment then you don't have the massive inflation. Especially since liquid supply is now over 10%. SP are now effectively deflationary (though one risk is there is no guarantee that continues for any particular time into the future).
Disagree. The confluence of the two makes the prognosis for locking up dismal because there is no investment case, and not even any medium-term speculation case thus no liquidity.
IMO, we can't separate the two as you want to, because they are not orthogonal. They amplify each other negatively.
"Rube Goldberg", I kind of agree with and actual market remains questionable. I wouldn't say it is as clear from underlying principles that there is no market (as opposed to just a flawed/incomplete implementation and/or bad marketing), which in the case of Bitshares is something I argued with r0ach about way back in his Bitshares pumping days.
I think there is no market because there is no stickiness. And the reason is because the concept of earning money from blogging (or curating) is flawed as a mass adoption onboarding.
What I instead think you mean is that it showed there is a market for giving away easy money. And especially when you can wrap in a Millennial's ideological furball. Appealed directly to the cryptonerds and their first-degree relations, but not beyond that.
What Steem did show us is that mass onboarding crypto might work, but we've got to have the right formula and feature set. And it also showed us that locking up payouts builds loyalty. But locking up investors was really, really, really, really stupid. So there, I just told you one of my design changes. See I am for open source.
